Work and Family

The readings this week discuss the relationship between the act of caring and the commercialization of family life.  Correll investigates the tendency for mothers and mothering to signify a lack of work-place competency.  While it is unclear the exact causes of this presumed incompetence (Correll speculates whether cultural values may play a large role), it is evident that mothers are not as valued as other workers.  It is ironic that this is the case: if mothers earn less due to compromised qualifications or abilities relating to motherhood, how is it that these same women are raised to a higher social standing than other individuals?  The iconic mother, upholding the values of a nation, can successfully rear future generations, yet cannot perform explicit workplace tasks efficiently and in a commited manner.  This paradox is evidently overlooked by those whose judgments promote the devaluing of employed mothers. 

Similarly, the ability of women to embody the qualities most often associated with the ideal Western mother is further marginalized by the removal of not only the individual, but the emotional demands of mothering from the domestic sphere and relocating these mothering qualities into the workplace.  Hochschild identifies two complementary mechanisms contributing to the devaluation of motherhood: first, the disenfranchisement of mothers, experienced in their separation from original families, and second, the reinsertion of these mothers into new families.  In these families, these mothers face a reality in which they are neither legitimate mothers nor official members.

For these readings I have three questions:

1. First: How well do the families in Becker’s article generalize to the broader population?  If the majority of the families studied were childless couples in their twenties or couples in their fifties or sixties whose children are young adults, how does this sample relate to families with small children, who must choose from a limited number repertoire of time-bind solutions?
2. Second: In what other ways does Western culture simultaneously idolize and demonize mothers?  Is it possible for equitably employed mothers to exist in this environment?  What policies would best promote this shift?
3. Third: What is the relationship between the “act” of emotion and the paid employment of nannies who embody the emotional work of caring?  If emotions are produced and reproduced, with individuals constantly legitimizing and undermining expected emotional behavior, to what extent is this occupation an extension of this expectation?